Just then Mongan glanced to the right whence the people were coming. Then he pulled the hood of his cloak over his ears and over his brow.
“Alas!” said he in a deep and anguished voice.
Mac an Da’v turned to him.
“Is it a pain in your stomach, master?”
“It is not,” said Mongan. “Well, what made you make that brutal and belching noise?”
“It was a sigh I gave,” said Mongan.
“Whatever it was,” said mac an Da’v, “what was it?”
“Look down the road on this side and tell me who is coming,” said his master.
“It is a lord with his troop.”
“It is the King of Leinster,” said Mongan. “The man,” said mac an Da’v in a tone of great pity, “the man that took away your wife! And,” he roared in a voice of extraordinary savagery, “the man that took away my wife into the bargain, and she not in the bargain.”